Category: Art

I’m beginning to think Donald Hamilton* might be my favorite writer of all. You really should read his work. Dark at times, the protagonist is always pragmatic, sometimes to the point of brutality. But it works. The protagonist is always a hero…it’s just that sometimes his principles do not allow him to be the Gentlemen he prefers to be. If that makes sense.

Anyway, in “Date with Darkness”, there is a low-level menace surrounding a vulnerable damsel. There is no direct threat of death, much less violence. Yet there is an undercurrent of both, like a steaming volcano set to erupt.

At the point I want to draw attention to, however, everything is still quiet, all the troubles are still only potential.

The protagonist faces the antagonists on a train, with all pretense dropped. Important information is given.

And then he skips to the next scene.

What else happened? What else did they talk about? How did he get out of the face-off? Did he just say “See you around!” and leave? Did they leave? How did he get through the next several hours on the train with the antagonists present (even without overt hostilities)? Why didn’t he try to pump more information out of them? Why didn’t they try to pump more information out of him?

So many questions. All ignored. And for some reason, it works.

I think I would have screwed that up. I think it would have been a sticking point in my writing, and attempting to resolve it, would have created a weak point in my story. Or, not knowing how to resolve it, I would have decided I had painted myself into a corner and abandoned the story.

In a short story I recently wrote, I cheated. I left an important issue unexplained. I put a bare fig leaf to cover the omission with the throwaway line of “there have been so many changes”

One or two people had a problem with my sleight of hand. And sure, it could have been done better. But three or four others had no objection at all, even resolving that problem with their own explanation, and probably far better than anything I could have suggested. And, perhaps more importantly, each personal resolution was different.

In writing a story, you need to tell that story (duh). You need to put words on paper that explain the action, thinking, motivation, implications, etc., of the story and its development. This is positive space.

But in art, there is also negative space. What you leave out can often be as important as what you put in. Some very effective paintings don’t have borders, or don’t take the image all the way to the borders. Some spaces are defined not by their own edges, but by the edges of the objects around them.

I think that’s what Hamilton did. There are certain things the reader needs to know to propel the story forward. There are things they don’t need to know, that would bog down the story. Sure, that’s obvious. You don’t include detailed accounts of characters going to the bathroom, normally.

But knowing how to apply that suddenly doesn’t seem as straightforward to me as it did just a few days ago.

I really need to think about this.

*Donald Hamilton is known, of course, for the Matt Helm series…when he is known at all. Matt Helm is a spy’s spy. Just so much better than James Bond could ever hope to be. The novels are twisty and tricky. Sometimes a mystery, often action-filled, things happen throughout the novels you simply don’t expect.

And then they ruined the reputation by making a parody of the character with a drunken Dean Martin. His films use the Matt Helm name to parody the 60s’ secret agent guy every bit as much as Austin Powers did. It sucks to have such a great character and such a great series slimed by such a shoddy treatment.

I recommend you try to get “Death of a Citizen” by Donald Hamilton. If you like that, you’ll like everything Hamilton writes, I think. Or if you want a more heroic hero, try “Assassins have Starry Eyes,” “The Steel Mirror,” or “Date with Darkness”.

There is a commercial running during NFL games by a satellite TV company, with the premise that there are some people who still like cable, but there are also some people who really like things that normal people hate, like painful, frustrating, or irritating things.

Well, I like igniting arguments over literature.

Let me put it up front in black and white: THERE IS NO VALUE JUDGMENT ATTACHED TO CLASSIFYING FICTION AS HARD SF, SOFT SF, OR FANTASY. If you attach a value judgment, your problem is you, not me.

Some may retort: Why do we need to classify literature at all? There is no benefit in creating divisions where none need exist!

There are probably many reasons to classify our literature, and perhaps there are reasons to not classify our literature. Offhand, I can think of two major reasons to do it, and just one to not.

First, the main reason to not classify literature is because in the end, it’s a story we enjoy, or not. If a story is good, it doesn’t matter whether it is Fantasy, Hard SF, or Soft SF. If I hand you Dragon’s Egg, I can tell you that it is one of the hardest SF stories out there, but that tells you nothing about whether it is a good story or not (I liked the concept, but the execution did not please teenager me. I stopped reading less than a third of the way through, and it left such a poor impression I’ve never picked it up again). So perhaps the main reason to not classify stories/books along these lines is if someone does think there is a value judgment that makes Soft SF inferior to Hard SF in some way, or if a reader thinks there is an arrogance aspect to the Hard SF mantle, since it is all Fantastic Fiction in any case.

However, I think the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

I think there are two main advantages to classifying speculative fiction along these lines, one for the author, and one for the reader. I will probably repeat some concepts, but I think I have some new ideas to add.

First, I think the main benefit is to the author. As a writer, you have to use skill and discipline to tell a good story. You need to know what kind of story you are writing, because that will help determine how you develop the story.

What I mean is, Arthur C. Clarke said that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. FTL travel is still pretty much magic, as is youth regeneration, storing personality in an electronic matrix, time travel, etc. Yet these are still mostly in the realm of Science Fiction, not Fantasy. Why?

With that in mind, I would like to propose a new classification system for Science Fiction vs Fantasy. Science Fiction is normal people doing fantastic things, and Fantasy is fantastic people doing normal things. Oh, sure, I know there are a million examples that you could use to argue with me on this, but don’t. Just accept it for now as you encounter fiction in the future.

In fantasy, you have people that have powers that don’t exist in the current world. They can impact reality through will alone (sometimes with a device, sometimes with innate ability). But that ability to impact reality is limited. No one else can use that ability, or can only do so by taking the magic device away. And while the impact may be fantastic, their goals are usually mundane. In the end, Frodo was merely walking a distance and throwing an object into a fire. Yes, it was a special object, a special fire, it was unimaginably difficult to arrive at his destination, and it saved the world. But the actions themselves were mundane. When you have fantastic powers, you have to make the goals more mundane so that readers can relate. The point of Speculative Fiction is to explore what it means to be human…the point of Fantasy is to show how power doesn’t really change basic human instincts, desires, and character. The power tempts, and corrupts, and enables, but the feelings, desires, goals, aims, flaws, weaknesses, and temptations are always that of a normal human. And if you are writing fantasy, there must be limits on the power, usually in the form of costs of using the power. Otherwise, you have a boring story. The conflict that drives the story is the limitations on the power. That’s why the best Fantasy stories have a world with complex-but-knowable rules of how power is exercised. One exception: The Lord of the Rings…but that was a story about normal individuals caught in power struggles beyond their ken. The viewpoint and protagonist had no magic of his own, and the only magic he had access to was cursed/poisoned…each use brought him closer to full damnation. Those were the limits of power that drove the narrative in the Lord of the Rings, and those limits were both clear and understandable to the reader. So there is some wiggle room in the restrictions I insist exist. But again: know what you are writing, and why, and it will help you develop your story more effectively.

So if my assertion has utility, and Fantasy is fantastic people doing normal things, and Science Fiction is normal people doing fantastic things, why do we need a division between Hard and Soft SF?

I think we need the division because it all goes back to the reader. For a reader to enjoy a story, they must be able to suspend their disbelief. They must care about the characters, and must be able to relate to them in some way.

How you handle the fantastic elements in your story has a huge impact on whether your readers can suspend their disbelief or not.

In Soft SF, pretty much anything goes. Most of the normal laws of physics are suspended. That gives you lots of freedom to play around with all the elements of the story. But there is a double-edged sword there: with that level of freedom, you need to address so much more about the laws of your universe. If you don’t, your readers will feel cheated and dislike the story.

To explain, I must digress. I’ve been mentally chewing on a concept for several years now. Every story is really just a variation on limited knowledge/communication. If all your characters knew everything that was going on, they would be in the right place and do the right thing, and the story would be over. To add conflict to the story, your characters have to encounter limits on information, they have to not know the antagonist’s plan, or location, or powers, etc. It is the quest to gain this understanding, and the obstacles they encounter in that quest, that makes the story interesting. Or if not communication, then distance and transportation. As has been pointed out, if the Fellowship had used the Eagles to drop the ring into the volcano, the story would have been over quickly and much less interesting.

So in Science Fiction, the first thing you need to determine is: what is your transportation technology, and what is your information technology?

Faster-than-light needs to have some sort of cost…maybe the cost is in time, maybe in damage to health, but there must be some cost to help build interest in the story. Communication has to have some limits, as well. Perhaps information is limited to those with resources, perhaps there is false information and the cost is having to sort through it all to find the real stuff. But you can get a great deal of conflict out of limiting communication. That’s why cell phones ruin horror movies, and one of the first things a writer does to create suspense is find a way to take away their phone service in a plausible manner.

In Soft SF, you make things easier on yourself by suspending/ignoring the laws of physics. But you then make it harder on yourself because you have to explain what laws do still exist, what don’t, and perhaps why. Then you have to figure out how those impact your society and what it means to be human. And then you have to be careful to not make the resolution of your story be the discovery of some aspect of your new rules that anyone who grew up with those rules should have known.

For example, although the resolution of the story didn’t hinge on this cheat by Edgar Rice Burroughs, it was ignoble of him to make John Carter be the first person on Barsoom to realize that if you treat an animal with care, it returns loyalty to you. The entire story didn’t hinge on that point, but it did resolve an obstacle. The thing is, this is an obvious point to anyone who isn’t a complete psychopath. If *no one* on Barsoom understood this, then even Dejah Thoris is an evil bitch not worthy of love. Since that is obviously not true, then it was a cheap device ERB used to get John Carter out of a jam, and it made the story worse. The inability for Martians (Barsoomians?) to recognize the value of treating animals with care never has any other impact on the story. This is not fair to the reader.

On the other hand, Hard SF makes many things easier on the writer and reader: the reader can assume that with the exception of one or two aspects not currently within our technological grasp, the fictional world is exactly like the world the reader inhabits. The writer doesn’t have to explain all the differences. The reader doesn’t have to consider as many changes to life and decide whether to suspend disbelief or not. The world *is* as it *is*, and that adds verisimilitude. One thing that makes Jumper and Wildside so enjoyable is Steven Gould changes just one *little* thing. He gives his main character one tiny resource, and then does everything he can to fully explore the impact of that ability on the character and our world. Now, the nature of those resources is never really explained, and so could be considered Soft SF or even Fantasy. After all, in Jumper, the main character is a person with a Fantastic ability, trying to do mundane things (escape an abusive father, find love/trust…the Do Great Things comes later in the story). But I think the approach is much more Hard SF: change as little as you can about the world and laws of physics, and then play out all the impacts of that change.

But I would be remiss if I didn’t admit: by putting Jumper and Wildside in Hard SF because of the approach, I am either destroying my thesis, or rendering the judgment fully subjective.

I want to argue for the latter. Hard SF, Soft SF, and Fantasy might be a bookshelf categorization, but it has little utility there. In the end, they are three different approaches to writing a story, and the writer has to know what they are writing, and why, and then signal it to the reader, who will then be more able to enjoy the story on the basis of the system the writer put forth.

Because Postman by David Brin was a disappointment to me. It started off merely as a Post-Apocalyptic Novel. A normal guy is transformed by merely adopting the trappings of minor authority of bygone days. That’s Hard SF, and good Hard SF: there is nothing that violates any laws of physics, the world is merely changed by the use of currently-existing weapons. But then two-thirds of the way through the book, it changes. The author introduces technology that doesn’t currently exist. Even worse, it seems to be technology that *can’t* exist, pushing it into the realm of Fantasy…but that’s not where Brin started the story. It feels like a betrayal, and made me stop caring how the book turned out.

Don’t do that to your readers. And if you are a reader, don’t accept that from your writers.

One final note: Based on this system, I have to consider John Carter to be Fantasy, not Soft SF. Then again, I still insist that the classifications are subjective, so if you disagree, that is the correct classification for you.